Saturday, April 23, 2011

Austria, once home of the mighty Habsburg Empire and birthplace of Mozart﻿ has now produced a socio-cultural phenomenon of no lessor import: its very own version of Jethro Bodine.

His name is Andreas Gabalier and he is the biggest pop singing phenom in that little country right now and threatens to spread his appeal to Germany and other parts of the Germanic world.

Andreas Gabalier

Germans consider Austria something of a cultural backwash and the 26 year old Gabalier is from the Styrian region near the border of the former Yugoslavia -- a backwash within a backwash.

I'm told he sings in a Styrian dialect, which would be something like an archaic Appalachian dialect in the US.

His attire is Bodinesque -- only lacking Jethro's trademark rope belt (Gabalier holds up his shorts with suspenders.)﻿﻿﻿

His on-stage exaggerated pelvis thrusting is comic, to say the least. Still, just like the 60s Beverly Hillbillies star Gabalier exudes a kind of innocent, boyish exuberance, which may explain his apparent appeal to the Austrian frauleins.

2 comments:

I miss our Jethro. I remember when he was applying at the exclusive Beverly Hills prep school and Jed said that Jethro "went to eatin'. This really impressed the haughty school marm who thought that Jed was saying that Jethro had gone to Eaton.

A Word From The Publisher:

About The Chicago Lampoon

Chicago is a very funny city.

In fact, it is a windswept glacial burg that is the source of a never-ending supply of knee-slappers and outright horselaughs.

From the neophyte community organizer that it foisted on an unsuspecting American electorate to the mop-topped sociopathic boy-Governor that it sent to the Letterman show, to its storied depression era, tommy-gun toting philanthropists, it has produced some truly amusing and amazing characters.

It has a Mayor who is a former ballet dancer, who served in a foreign army and who threatens political enemies by sending them dead fish in the mail. It has 50 sleepy Alderman and 5, usually somnolent professional sports franchises

It has two Jesse Jacksons!

It has more potholes per capita than Nairobi, a creaky 1940s-era elevated train system and cops who get caught on videotape punching out bar maids and businessmen.

As we have since 2009, we are only going to report and comment on what actually happens in Chicago. To make up stuff this weird would tax our inventive capabilities to the limit (or at least as high as the, highest-in-the-nation, Cook County sales taxes.)

Meet The Editors

We're somewhere between Burkean conservatives and bomb throwing anarchists depending on the mood of the moment and the amount of restorative libation we have recently consumed.
But we're usually able to couch our maunderings in some pretty good journalistic prose.